Prescribed burn on Ted Turner's NM ranch crosses into Colo.

Originally intended as a controlled burn in Vermejo Park Ranch in New Mexico about 50 miles west of Raton last weekend, high winds soon expanded the blaze into a two-state firefighting effort as the flames crossed into Las Animas and Costilla counties in Colorado. Smoke from the fire was noticeable Monday afternoon as far to the northeast as Trinidad, though by late Wednesday the blaze, estimated at 55 percent contained, had only spread as far into Las Animas County as the San Francisco Pass, a high-elevation area of rugged terrain in the southwestern corner of the county south of Stonewall and Torres. The fire began Sunday at about 11:20 a.m. when a prescribed burn on Vermejo Park Ranch — a 590,823-acre private ranch owned by media mogul Ted Turner that is mostly in western Colfax County but extends into Colorado — got out of control and spread outside the 600-acre planned area for the prescribed burn...more